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Hillel Silverman, longtime rabbi whose congregant killed JFK’s assassin, is dead at 99
(JTA) — “If you want to know about my brother, Jack Ruby, you should talk to Hillel Silverman. He was our rabbi in Dallas for 10 years before President Kennedy’s assassination, and he knew Jack very well.”
It was 1976, and I had convinced Eva Rubenstein Grant — a loud woman with an even louder red wig — to appear on an ABC program to speak about her brother, who fatally shot John F. Kennedy’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live television 13 years earlier.
It was years, however, before I was able to speak to Rabbi Silverman, for a TV program I was producing about the JFK assassination. Our conversation in 1991 was the first of several chats we had about Ruby (and other topics) and the glancing role Silverman played in the national trauma surrounding the president’s murder. He was one of the last surviving witnesses who testified in 1964 before the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination.
The Kennedy assassination was a relatively minor aspect of a 70-year career in the rabbinate, during which Silverman served as the founding rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, and then as the senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles for 16 years, among other pulpits.
Silverman, the son of a prominent Conservative rabbi, died in Los Angeles this week of pneumonia at the age of 99. It was one month after he celebrated his birthday — and the birth of a great-grandson and the upcoming wedding of a grandchild — at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, where in his last official role he served as a visiting scholar.
Silverman was spiritual leader of Shearith Israel in Dallas from 1954 to 1964; Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with links to the Mafia, was one of his congregants. Silverman told me in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy and Oswald murders, that Ruby would attend services to say Kaddish, the memorial prayer, for his father.
“He came to the minyan one day with a cast on his arm,” Silverman recalled. “I said, Jack, what happened? He said, ‘In my club, somebody was very raucous, and I was the bouncer.’”
Nov. 22, 1963, the day Oswald shot and killed Kennedy, was a Friday. Evening services at the synagogue “became a memorial service for the president,” Silverman said. “Jack was there. People were either irate or in tears, and Jack was neither. He came over and said, ‘Good Shabbos, rabbi. Thank you for visiting my sister Eva in the hospital last week.’ I thought that was rather peculiar.”
Two days later, Silverman switched on the radio and heard that a “Jack Rubenstein” had just killed the alleged assassin. The Warren Commission would later come to the still-disputed conclusion that Ruby acted alone — quashing rumors of a conspiracy — and shot Oswald on impulse and out of grief over Kennedy’s assassination.
“I was shocked. I visited him the next day in jail, and I said ‘Why, Jack, why?’ He said, ‘I did it for the American people.’”
I interrupted Silverman at that point, as I’d read other reports in which Ruby said he did it “to show that Jews had guts.” The rabbi sighed. “Yes, he mentioned that. But I don’t like to mention it. I think he said, ‘I did it for the Jewish people.’ But I’ve tried to wipe that statement from my mind.”
Silverman vividly described his weekly jailhouse visits to his now-notorious congregant, who was found guilty of murdering Oswald and who died in prison from lung cancer four years after the assassination. “In prison, Jack deteriorated psychologically,” Silverman recalled. “One time I walked in and he said, ‘Come on, rabbi, duck underneath the table. They’re pouring oil on the Jews and setting it on fire.’ He was quite psychotic.”
Jack Ruby, right, shoots Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Nov. 25, 1963. (Dallas Times Herald)
Hillel Emanuel Silverman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1924 to Althea, a prolific author, and Rabbi Morris Silverman, a prominent Conservative rabbi who edited the Shabbat and High Holiday prayer books used by the movement for more than half a century.
Hillel was ordained as a Conservative rabbi after graduating from Yale University. Following his service as a Navy chaplain during the Korean War, he led the congregations in Dallas and Los Angeles, and served 20 years as a spiritual leader of Temple Sholom in Greenwich, Connecticut.
He and his first wife Devora had three children: Gila Rutta, Dr. Sharon Pollock and Jonathan Silverman, the actor best known for films such as “Weekend at Bernie’s” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” He is survived by his wife of over 40 years, Roberta Silverman, his three children, three step-children (David Smotrich, Debbie Diamond and Arona Smotrich), 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Silverman wrote or co-edited a dozen books, and during a visit when he was 95 told me, “I think I still have one more in me.” He was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Medal of Honor from Israel’s then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin for his “distinguished service to Israel and the Jewish people.” He was past president of the Zionist Organization of America, Southwest Region.
In his 90s, he continued to officiate at High Holiday services in southern California, at times with one of his grandchildren, Rabbi Matt Rutta.
When the COVID pandemic shut down in-person classes, Silverman conducted weekly online Torah study sessions with Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom synagogue. Sharp-eyed participants would notice a movie poster on the wall behind Silverman for “Weekend at Bernie’s II,” in which he appeared briefly as a restaurant maitre d’.
My final visit with Rabbi Silverman took place last October. He was in a wheelchair, living with his daughter Sharon and son-in-law Mark, and his mind and sense of humor remained as sharp as ever. Last month, I was thrilled to receive a birthday email from him, recalling our discussions about Ruby and wishing me continued success in my career. “Since I am thirty years ahead of you, I can guarantee many more productive, enjoyable years!” he wrote.
During his final hospitalization, a family member at his bedside asked about the rabbi’s former congregant one last time: Did Ruby have anything to do with a conspiracy?
The family shared a video of that moment with me, in which Silverman adjusts his oxygen mask, shakes his head and firmly says, “No!”
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The post Hillel Silverman, longtime rabbi whose congregant killed JFK’s assassin, is dead at 99 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – As Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made campaign stops with a prominent Jewish congressional leader on Wednesday, there was one subject neither he, nor his Democratic allies onstage, were interested in discussing.
“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” Michigan U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell told the crowd at an Ann Arbor, Mich., town hall, to cheers. “It’s not what November is about.”
Dingell’s crack was the only time the prominent left-wing streamer’s name was mentioned at all during the pair of El-Sayed rallies that day. Piker’s recent comments that American Jews who “tie” themselves to Israel would “suffer the consequences of the actions of that state” prompted uproar from several corners of Democratic leadership. Despite this, El-Sayed’s new Jewish campaign surrogate, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, avoided the topic altogether.
That reluctance to talk about Piker on the campaign trail Wednesday extended to the candidate himself. El-Sayed didn’t mention Piker, nor Israel, once in either of his campaign stops with Raskin, except when asked directly by reporters.
The former county health official campaigned with Piker during the primary — including at one stop at the University of Michigan a stone’s throw away from Wednesday’s event — as the two made opposition to Israel a central issue of his candidacy. But at a press conference following his Ann Arbor event, El-Sayed described Piker as “a streamer in California,” adding that the media was putting too much focus on his most prominent supporter.
“I’m less interested in going to the tabloid version of our politics where we cover this as who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, who’s talking to who,” El-Sayed said. “I’m a lot more interested in talking to the people in the state who had a bum deal because of Donald Trump and the politics that [El-Sayed’s GOP opponent] Mike Rogers has been the epitome of for a very long time.”
Raskin, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats in the House, also showed a reluctance to talk about Jewish voters in general. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked the congressman in Ann Arbor how he would sell El-Sayed to Jewish Democrats uncomfortable with his rhetoric. In response, he did not mention Jewish concerns.
“Those of us who have been fighting Donald Trump and his authoritarianism and corruption and violence against American citizens and immigrants for 10 years now understand that this is an essential referendum about the future,” Raskin said in response. “Will we have democracy or will we have autocracy?”
He added that he has been “campaigning for Democrats all over the country,” and praised the party for being “a very big tent.”
“Just like any big family Thanksgiving dinner, there can be arguments and people jostling, and there’s unruliness,” Raskin said. “But fundamentally, we all believe in democracy and freedom and the progress and prosperity of our people.”
Yet questions about Piker, and how close the movement he represents may come to remaking the Democratic Party’s values, hang over both Michigan’s Senate race and the future of Jewish inclusion in the party. As the party fights to retake Congress this fall, some liberal Jewish voters believe the growing backlash against Israel among the “big tent”’s progressive wing is damaging their historic coalition. A growing number of Jewish voters in Michigan who previously backed Democrats are now supporting Rogers instead, and El-Sayed’s association with Piker is often cited as a key reason why.
In playing the role of uniter, Raskin is slaloming carefully between the party’s different factions. Before campaigning with El-Sayed, the congressman stumped for Michigan Rep. Hillary Scholten, a moderate Democrat who has withheld her endorsement of El-Sayed while specifying his association with Piker as a sticking point.
Also being silent on the rallies is a key target of Piker’s: Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, whose likeness the streamer had made his latest comments in front of. The Jewish and pro-Israel Democratic congressional candidate is running in a heavily Jewish district that encompasses Oakland County, where El-Sayed’s second rally of the day took place. In recent days, Moss said that El-Sayed was “going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community.” He declined to comment to JTA about the day’s rallies.
As they largely avoided the elephant in the room among Democrats, El-Sayed and his allies also preached the importance of party unity in taking on their Republican opponents.
“There’s a big effort to divide us,” Raskin told the second rally’s audience in Farmington Hills. “They’re trying to pick on disagreements in our party, trying to exacerbate conflict, because we have freedom of thought in our party and freedom of speech in our party and freedom of dialogue.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops appeared first on The Forward.
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Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired
(JTA) — Dolly Parton, the singer who died Tuesday at age 80 after a brief bout with cancer, was mourned around the world as a stellar songwriter, consummate country hitmaker, savvy entrepreneur and generous philanthropist.
In Jewish circles, she was also remembered as the inspiration for PJ Library, a program that sends free children’s books to Jewish families in order to foster Jewish values and traditions.
In 2015, when Harold Grinspoon launched PJ Library, he took a page from Parton, who a decade earlier had started Imagination Library, a literacy program that mails free children’s books to families across the U.S.
After hearing Parton interviewed about the program, Grinspoon, a philanthropist in and out of the Jewish community, signed on as a sponsor of the Imagination Library in Western Massachusetts, where he lives.
“We should create a Jewish version of Imagination Library,” said Grinspoon, according to a 2023 recollection by his daughter-in-law and president of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, Winnie Sandler Grinspoon.
“Harold was looking for ways to build Jewish literacy,” she wrote. “He was witnessing a lack of connection to the values, stories, and traditions that have been at the center of the Jewish experience for millennia.”
Two decades later, PJ Library has more than 670,000 subscribers in 40 countries.
On Tuesday, in a tribute to Parton, PJ Library and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation recalled a meeting between the two in 2023. According to an Instagram post, “she shared the following with him: ‘I am honored to get to help inspire a love of reading in children. They truly are our future.’”
“Harold remembers Dolly as ‘a truly amazing person — not only a great artist, but a great entrepreneur and philanthropist,” according to the post. “We honor Dolly for educating millions, for her remarkable career, her kindness, her art, and especially her generosity.”
“Dolly’s generosity of spirit extended far beyond inspiring the creation of PJ Library,” Alex Zablotsky, PJ Library’s executive director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Parton drew inspiration for her art and philanthropy from her hardscrabble roots in rural Tennessee. She was one of 12 kids growing up in a one-room log cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Parton’s father never learned how to read or write.
“This actually started because my father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling that could be,” Parton said of the Imagination Library at a ceremony where she was awarded a Carnegie Medal for her partnership with a pediatric hospital in East Tennessee, now named for Parton.
“My dad was a very smart man. And I often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write. So that is the inspiration,” she said.
Parton had a close bond with other Jews, notably Sandy Gallin, the manager who guided her from Nashville to mainstream pop stardom, according to the Forward.
When Gallin died in 2017, Parton said, “Nobody could quite get how the Christian Southern girl and the New York Jewish boy could have so much in common. But it was real.”
One trouble spot, however, came in a 1994 interview with Vogue Magazine, when Parton mused about starting a television series about a country singer who turns to gospel music. She gave up the idea, she said, because “most of the people out here [Hollywood] are Jewish and it’s frightening for them to promote Christianity.”
She later apologized in a letter to Abe Foxman, then head of the Anti-Defamation League, JTA reported at the time.
“I know how stereotypes can be hurtful,” she wrote. “Like all Americans of good will, I recognize the importance of rejecting prejudice.”
Foxman accepted her apology. “Whatever she said was unfortunate, and she recognizes that,’” Foxman told The New York Times. “I know it’s not easy for celebrities to publicly say they made a mistake. As far as we are concerned, the matter is behind us.”
On Tuesday, Laura Liebman, director of development for The Bronfman Fellowship for young Jewish leaders, paid tribute to the singer, who was a feminist and an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Dolly somehow managed to transcend race, class, religion, politics and gender,” Liebman wrote in an essay for eJewishPhilanthropy. “As the Jewish community becomes increasingly siloed, we could all learn from Dolly’s radical acceptance and show more love and compassion for our fellow Jews.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired appeared first on The Forward.
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Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – A window was broken at a Reform synagogue on Sunday in the central Israeli city of Ramat Hasharon less than two weeks after a similar incident occurred in Jerusalem in an incident the mayor called an act of vandalism.
Congregation Darchei Noam called the incident a hate crime, and Ramat Hasharon Mayor Itzik Rochberger condemned the incident and called for police investigation.
Police said the damage was most likely caused by rocks thrown at the building during the night but said the motive remained under investigation.
Rabbi Eli Levin, who leads Darchei Noam, said a heavy paving stone had been used to smash the window.
“This wasn’t children playing and a stone accidentally being thrown,” Levin told JTA.
The incident came just over a week after vandals broke into Kol HaNeshama, a prominent Reform synagogue in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. In that occurrence, a group of youths smashed a window, entered the prayer hall, damaged artwork and tore down Pride flags displayed by the congregation. No worshippers were present at the time. Police opened an investigation but have not publicly announced any arrests.
“The smashing of the windows tonight at the Reform synagogue in the city is a serious act of vandalism and we will not let it pass without response,” Rochberger said, calling on police to thoroughly investigate the attack and bring those responsible to justice.
He added that Ramat Hasharon was committed to “freedom, tolerance, pluralism and coexistence” between religious and secular residents and said the city would not allow extremists to intimidate residents or damage the fabric of communal life.
“We will stand together against any attempt to harm the character of Ramat Hasharon and the values on which it is founded,” Rochberger said.
Democrats MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who previously headed Israel’s Reform movement, linked the attack to recent violence against Reform congregations, businesses operating on Shabbat and anti-government protesters.
“They will smash and break – we will repair and build,” he wrote on X.
Darchei Noam was founded in Ramat Hasharon in 1981 and serves residents of that city, Herzliya and northern Tel Aviv. The congregation holds egalitarian services in which women and men participate equally and also runs educational programs, bar and bat mitzvah preparation and community volunteer activities, according to its website.
The congregation spent years fighting for the right to build a permanent synagogue. After the municipality declined to allocate land to a non-Orthodox congregation, the dispute ultimately reached Israel’s High Court of Justice, which ruled that the community could receive a plot.
Darchei Noam said it would hold its regular Friday night service as planned and called on supporters to attend in a show of solidarity following the attack.
“We will continue and we will not be deterred,” Levin said. “We will continue to hold egalitarian ceremonies and celebrate the holidays in our Jewish-Israeli way.”
The incident came as Ramat Hasharon and nearby Herzliya have been locked in disputes over businesses operating on Shabbat. In June, a Tel Aviv court dismissed a petition seeking to force the Ramat Hasharon municipality to enforce its existing Shabbat closure bylaw at the BIG Fashion Glilot shopping complex after the city pledged to apply the law under a new enforcement policy.
The municipality has simultaneously sought Interior Ministry approval to amend the decades-old bylaw to permit businesses to open on Saturdays in designated areas. Rochberger has repeatedly defended that effort, saying Ramat Hasharon should remain pluralistic and protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
Just a few hundred meters away from the synagogue, businesses in the Neve Israel neighborhood of Herzliya have repeatedly been vandalized after opening on Shabbat. The local Othello ice cream shop was attacked three times before its owners stopped opening on Saturdays, citing safety concerns, while the windows of the nearby Pasta Basta restaurant were smashed in late July. Pasta Basta continued operating on Shabbat.
Herzliya Mayor Yariv Fisher has urged residents to support businesses that remained open on Saturdays.
“This will only spur me to keep working day and night to ensure that Herzliya remains a beacon of liberalism,” Fisher wrote on Facebook. “I invite the public to support all the city’s restaurants, entertainment businesses and cafes.”
Jerusalem has seen a parallel fight over Shabbat commerce in recent weeks. Cafe Basimta, near the Mahane Yehuda market, has faced weekly demonstrations by haredi Orthodox protesters since early July over its decision to remain open on Saturdays. Police have been deployed repeatedly at the site as protesters and counterprotesters faced off. A 75-year-old woman was arrested this month on suspicion of repeatedly vandalizing the cafe by damaging its lock and throwing garbage at the premises.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken appeared first on The Forward.
